As January draws to a close, our favorite stories this week included a stirring critical essay, a paean to the worldโs greatest boxed meal, a rethinking of psychedelicsโ impact on the planet, a profile of a craftsperson at his peak, and an eye-opener about how humpback whales use air in some unexpected ways.
Ken Chenย |ย n+1ย |ย 11,542 wordsย |ย January 25, 2023
After Corky Lee passed last year, the photographer and community organizer was memorialized in his hometownโs most conventionally prestigious outlets: Theย Timesย offered a sizable obituary, as didย Hua Hsu inย The New Yorker. This week, on the first anniversary of Leeโs death, Ken Chen rendered an altogether different kind of portrait inย n+1. Much of the same biographical information is included, as are a number of Leeโs iconic photographs of Asian Americans in New York throughout the last six decades. Yet, when Chen writes about his encounters with Lee, and about the 14 photographs he selects to represent Leeโs work, the grief that suffuses his words isnโt solely about Lee, but about the many atrocities visited upon the Asian American community, up to and after Leeโs death. Chenโs critical acumen here is reason enough to read: โHis images lack a charismatic subject,โ he writes of Lee. โThose whom capital dismissed as surplus, he saw as beautiful. He commemorated the multitude, the striking waiters and seamstresses whose unruly abundance crowded away any beatific composition.โ But he brings a similar understated poetry to the social conditions Leeโs work served to illuminate โ and with violence against Asian American elders and others seemingly unending (including a horrifyingย recent attackย in my own hometown), that juxtaposition makes Chenโs piece nearly as indelible as the images it contains. โPR
Ivana Rihter | Catapult | January 19, 2023 | 2,261 words
I only discovered Kraft dinners later in life after moving to North America revealed the cult of Kraft to me. A stable lurking in every cupboard; I admired the respect that something so impossibly orange had managed to garner. When Ivana Rihter finds KDs, though, they are much more; cooked for her by her baba, they are inextricably linked to her immigration story. She describes the process of boiling the pasta and adding the sauce with reverence, the memory mixed in with her love for her baba and appreciation for the economic hardships her family struggled through to start their new life. Her baba teaches her to put feta on top, and with this โsecret little piece of the home country mixed in with all-American shelf-stable cheeseโ it remains a food for life, and โ consistently sitting at about a dollar a box โ one that carries on seeing her through hard times. I found this an unexpectedly beautiful essay, more about memory and belonging than cheesy pasta. Food can transport you back in time, especially if, as Rihter describes it, it โis soaked with memories of [an] origin story.โ โCW
Amber X. Chen | Atmos | January 16, 2023 | 3,196 words
In this piece, Chen explores what the current psychedelic renaissance means for environmental activism, and how synthetic drugs like LSD and MDMA and psychoactive plants like ayahuasca and peyote can stir change within individuals โ and ultimately galvanize social movements. This all sounds incredibly positive on the surface, but not everyone who dabbles in such mind-altering journeys is transformed for the better; psychedelics also fuel right-wing movements, too. (See: โQAnon Shaman.โ) The decriminalization of psychedelics is a step toward making their therapeutic benefits accessible to more people, yes, but as Chen notes, it increases the threat of deforestation, and โ with todayโs psychedelic movement being largely white โ it also takes power away from Indigenous people, who have harnessed the healing power of these sacred plants for thousands of years. (See also aย Top 5 essayย I picked last year: โThe Gentrification of Consciousness.โ) I appreciate Chenโs exploration here, and the questions posed that I havenโt stopped thinking about, like: โHow broken is Western society that we think we need drugs in order to facilitate mass climate action?โ โCLR
Elly Fishman | Chicago Magazine | January 17, 2023 | 4,177 words
Recently, in his late 60s, my dad decided to learn how to play the violin. I respect the choice to try the impossible, especially something as delicate and timeless as bowing a stringed instrument. (My parentsโ cats, who endure the scratching out of notes from beneath the couch or bed, seem to have a different opinion.) After reading this lovely profile, I think perhaps my dad, a skilled carpenter, should also try apprenticing as a luthier. I, someone with zero skills at playing an instrument besides an egg shaker, who curses putting IKEA furniture together, was mesmerized by the descriptions of how John Becker, perhaps the best violin restorer on earth, practices his craft. Elly Fishmanโs profile has a musical quality: It sweeps readers through chapters of Beckerโs personal story and dwells in long, lyrical moments when, with the surest of hands, Becker repairs some of the most revered instruments on the planet โ namely, Stradivari. There are just 650 of the violins left. What makes them so extraordinary? Musicians and scientists may puzzle over that question forever. In the meantime, Becker works โ quietly, meticulously, instinctively. โWe are caretakers of these instruments,โ one of his clients tells him. โWe move on, but these instruments continue to the next generation.โ โSD
Doug Perrine | Hakai Magazine | December 20, 2022 | 1,500 words
Itโs well known that many animals use tools to aid feeding and other tasks of life. Think: otters floating on their backs, cracking shells with rocks. Youโd think it would be hard for whales to use tools, but as Doug Perrine reports atย Hakai Magazine, humpbacks use whatโs available to them โ air and water โ to form bubbles for a variety of activities. โIโm tempted to describe the air in a humpbackโs lungs as a Swiss army knife because Iโve seen whales do so many different things with it,โ he wrote. โIt is not actually a tool collection though, but a storehouse of raw construction material with which the whale can fashion a variety of tools. Lacking free fingers and opposable thumbs, whales are unable to create and use tools in the same way as humans, but reveal their intelligence through the manner in which they utilize other body parts for tool production and use.โ โKS
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